Sloan Center for Internet Retailing - University of California, Riverside

The Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, located at the University of California, Riverside, is the world's leading university research center dedicated to improving the effectiveness of online retailing.

Join the UCR eLab Panel and participate in our ground-breaking academic research (and win monthly cash prizes for doing so).

Below are the most recent posts of the Sloan Center blog. We invite you to browse.

The last time the real estate market crashed in the early 90s, somebody estimated that it took over 18 months for the fact to dawn on the masses that prices were collapsing. That makes sense when you consider that information was on one-way pipe from realtors, the financial markets and the media to the mass market "audience" consuming newspapers and TV shows. This time, I have to wonder if it won't happen faster - a whole lot faster.  Consider how much things have changed.  The entire MLS is available online, ziprealty.com tracks price reductions in real time, zillow.com offers instant "Zestimates" of a home's real value in a way-cool graphical context (check out those "bird's eye" views), and dozens of blogs not only discuss the impending crash, they offer near daily reams of won't-find-anywhere-else insightful and scary analysis. Continue reading →

By popular demand, the “Conjoint Interactive Exercises” are once again available.

These interactive on-line exercises were developed in 1998 by Tom Novak and programmed by Andy Bass, at Project 2000. These exercises can be used to demonstrate the basic principles of conjoint analysis as used in marketing research.

These interactive exercises were awarded the 2005 “Merlot Business Classics” award. The exercises are set in the contexts of movie theater and airline travel preferences. The first exercise asks students to order, from most preferred to least preferred, 18 hypothetical theater configurations which vary in terms of five attributes: ticket price, line-of-sight, seat comfort, audio/visual equipment, and concessions. A parallel exercise asks students to evalute 18 hypohetical airline flights. The resulting output lists the relative importance of each attribute to the student, and provides part worth information for each level of the five attributes.

Please follow the links below to access the exercises.

1) Design a Movie Theater Using Conjoint Analysis
2) Airline Conjoint Exercise

We have received many requests for the source code for these exercises. The Java Source Code for the the following three conjoint applets can be downloaded, with terms of use specified by the open source license appearing at the top of the source code:

Airline java applet source
Movie java applet source
Movie java apple source with logging

It's hard for me to understand how the United States Senator who heads the Senate Commerce Committee can be so ignorant about the Internet.  Ted Stevens, the Republican Senator from Alaska, actually chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.  As such, he is responsible for communications bills that impact the Internet.  Aren't there minimum education requirements for these posts?

If you've been traveling the blogosphere, then you know that Senator Stevens appears to have no clue regarding the Internet. 

Pathetic and scary.  Check out Jon Stewart's hilarious riff on the sorry "tubes" analogy and a fun electronica video (both cycle randomly in the lower right of our blog - just refresh).  Other fun jabs here.

We’ve chosen to set up the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing Web site at the University of California, Riverside, using Wordpress blogging software.  Why?  From 1994 to 2006, we’ve maintained a series of websites for our research centers - Project 2000, eLab, and the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing - at Vanderbilt University.  Tools for implementing these websites ranged from hand-coded html on a Unix server back in 1994, to Frontpage, to Dreamweaver and ColdFusion. 

Continue reading →

Early eLab character art, created by Mike Meredith. Click on each image to view Mike’s original hand sketches.

Mike also designed the Sloan Center’s current shopping cart logo…

All images (c) 2006, Sloan Center for Internet Retailing. Hand sketches copyright Mike Meredith.

The A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Riverside invites applications for up to four full-time tenure-track faculty positions as Assistant Professor in Marketing to begin July 1, 2007. We seek candidates with highly sophisticated research training who can demonstrate the potential for outstanding accomplishment and scholarly distinction in marketing. Research area is open but preference will be given to candidates with strong methodological training and behavioral research interests. Teaching opportunities are available at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.  Candidates must have the Ph.D. or expect the degree to be conferred by the date of appointment. 

File review will begin June 1, 2006. First consideration will be given to candidates who apply by the application deadline of September 1, 2006

Download pdf of full job announcement.

The Sloan Center for Internet Retailing officially moved to the University of California, Riverside on July 1, 2006.   Professors Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak, formerly of Vanderbilt University, will co-direct the UCR Sloan Center.  The UCR Sloan Center is supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and corporate partners, including founding partners Walmart.com and Lands' End.   (Press release).

Pavlou, Paul A. and Ting Lie, "What Drives Mobile Commerce? A Model of Mobile Commerce Adoption," (2006).

Abstract.  Mobile commerce - the consumer’s engagement in online transactions with sellers using wireless devices - differs from traditional or electronic commerce due to the potential for location-specific real-time transactions and the unique attributes of wireless devices. This paper aims to understand what drives consumers to engage in mobile transactions by viewing m-commerce adoption as a process consisting of three distinct behaviors: (a) ‘getting information’ (b) ‘giving information’, and (c) ‘purchasing’ products using wireless devices. These three inter-related behaviors are first integrated, following the theory of implementation intentions. Second, following the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), each behavioral intention is predicted through its attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control (self-efficacy and controllability). Third, a comprehensive set of salient beliefs for each behavior is elicited and tested by inductively identifying antecedents of the TPB constructs. These salient beliefs include technology acceptance variables (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use), mobile device characteristics (download delay, screen quality, and device navigability), information characteristics (informativeness and information protection), product characteristics (product value and personalization), and consumer characteristics (monetary resources and consumer skills).

An empirical study with consumers in two countries (United States and Republic of China) supports the proposed m-commerce adoption model. The differences and similarities between these two countries are discussed, and implications for the adoption of m-commerce, TPB, and the IS literature are proposed.  Download pdf.

Dimoka, Angelika and Paul A. Pavlou, "Mitigating Adverse Product and Seller Selection in Online Auction Marketplaces," (2006)

Abstract.  To overcome a market of ‘lemons’, online auction marketplaces must differentiate among products and reward high-quality ones with price premiums. However, the literature has only focused on seller quality uncertainty (seller reputation), alas ignoring the role of product quality uncertainty. It is defined as the degree by which the outcome of a transaction cannot be accurately predicted due to fears that the product’s quality may differ from what is expected. Product quality uncertainty is particularly important in used and expensive experience products, such as used automobiles, whose quality cannot be conveyed via the web interface. To address adverse product selection, this study first introduces a set of product-related variables (warranty, inspection, posted price, standard value, year and mileage) that is proposed to influence price premiums by reducing product quality uncertainty. Moreover, it proposes their interaction effects with seller reputation. The proposed econometric model is tested with a multivariate regression model with secondary data from 350,000 auctions of used cars completed on eBay Motors using a custom data mining tool. Implications for mitigating adverse product selection and preventing a market of ‘lemons’ are discussed.  Download pdf.

Gefen, David and Paul A. Pavlou, "An Inverted-U Theory of Trust:  The Moderating Role of Perceived Regulatoary Effectiveness of Online Marketplaces," (2006).

Abstract.  Past research has widely regarded trust as unconditionally facilitating transaction behavior, and perceived risk as unconditionally detracting from it. This study advocates the necessity to examine trust and perceived risk within the broader perspective of the societal context. We propose the perceived regulatory effectiveness of online marketplaces to moderate the impact of trust on transaction behavior. More specifically, we hypothesize that the degree to which buyer’s trust affects transaction intentions will vary in an inverted U manner depending on the perception buyers have in the regulatory effectiveness of the online marketplace. The impact of trust on transaction intentions will increase as the buyer’s perceived regulatory effectiveness increases from low to medium levels, but it will decrease as the buyer’s perceived effectiveness increases from medium to high levels. Moreover, the perceived regulatory effectiveness of the online marketplace is also hypothesized to reduce the impact of perceived risk on transaction intentions. These moderating effects were examined and empirically supported in the context of eBay’s and Amazon’s online auction marketplaces. Implications for integrating the perceived regulatory effectiveness of online marketplaces into existing trust and risk models are discussed.  Download pdf.